1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a graphical user interface (GUI) for an information mediation system.
2. Description of Related Art
In accordance with a recent development of communication technologies and its pervasion into the society, information sources available on WWW (World Wide Web, hereinafter referred to as “Internet”) are increasing. As examples of such information sources, there are emerging, for example, a multimember participating intelligent active body (a site where a plurality of persons exchange information and opinions via internet, which includes, for example, an electronic bulletin board system (BBS) and a network community (hereinafter referred to as a community) such as a chat net system provided on the internet) and other sites handling various contents such as picture images, paintings, music and so on. With an increasing number of these information sources, it is becoming more difficult for a user to search and find an information source which corresponds to his/her own sense of value from an enormous number of information sources. Consequently, there is an increasing need for a development of a mechanism of presentation whereby the user can efficiently select an appropriate information source the user wants and participate therein.
As an example of conventional mechanisms of presentation for allowing the user efficiently to select an information source, there is a categorized classification display method.
In this method, various information sources are classified into several categories in advance, for example, into “art and humanity”, “business and economy”, “computer and internet”, . . . , and respective names of categories are labeled for reference. When the user selects one from a plurality of names of categories, information sources belonging to this selected category are presented. Further, in most cases, it is general that the category classification is given in a hierarchical system. The hierarchical category classification system has such a repetitive structure that one category includes sub categories, and a respective sub category includes sub-sub categories, and so on. For example, the following repetitive structure may exist, “entertainment > movie, video > soundtrack > . . . .”
Further, as another example of conventional technologies for presenting information sources to the user, there is a method of presenting a list/table of information sources extracted on the basis of keywords. In the keyword search method, a database in which information sources and keywords extracted corresponding to the contents thereof are registered is provided in advance, and when the user inputs a keyword of interest, any information source corresponding to the keyword is presented. In this instance, generally, these keywords use a word as it appears in the contents of the information source. For example, “hobby”, “fishing” and the like keywords are used. Further, as the method of display in the case of presentation of the table or list, it will list in the order of freshness of information or in a descending order of the number of hits or coincidence of search.
The conventional methods of presentation of information sources described above, however, have the following problems.
1. The Categorized Classification Presentation Method
First of all, it is not always possible that the above-mentioned categorized classification presentation method can efficiently provide a systematic classification of information sources the user actually desires. It is because that a respective information source has a different “information value” depending on various reasons such as a purpose of its foundation, idiosyncrasy of its producer, personality of the operator, propensity of participants, types and contents of information to be treated in its information source, the number of participants (many or few), activity, discussions, submission of inquiries and solutions, expression of opinions, seeking friends, sharing of emotions, and so on. The “information value” refers to evaluation information given to an information source or to individual pieces of information contained in the information source, and, in particular, it relates to evaluation information which more significantly and saliently indicates characteristics that an individual information source has over a whole entity of the information sources of interest.
On the other hand, each user seeks a different information value depending on one's own sense of values. For example, a user who is fond of a logical thinking will prefer logical topics generally, and a user who weighs feelings will prefer sensitive topics.
In consideration of satisfaction of the user, it is desirable to provide a method of presentation of information sources so that the user can select in accordance with his/her own sense of values. However, the typical conventional categorized classification presentation does not necessarily agree with a classification presentation based on the information value. Further, it is generally difficult objectively to determine an information value on an information source described above and label a category title thereon. Therefore, since the methods of presentation of information described above cannot present information sources, the user can not efficiently select a correct information source the user actually wanted to access.
2. Keyword Search Method
On the other hand, even in the keyword search method, a result of presentation of information obtained is not always in conformance with the sense of values the user actually wanted to access. It is because that a user-designated keyword, for example, “logical” may not be contained in an information source that has actually an information value desired, thereby, it often occurs to fail to hit and output the information source having the “information value” the user wanted to access even if searched using such keyword. Further, as compared with an ordinary case of searching information on a specific topic by inputting a keyword, it is generally difficult to explicitly express an “information value” corresponding to one's own sense of value into language of keywords, except for a user who always performs a self-analysis of that sort. Still further, because the order of presentation of the information sources extracted and listed by searching does not always coincide with the order of preference in the sense of values of the user, the user will have to browse the contents of the whole information sources extracted, which, however, will be impossible in practice as the number of the information sources extracted becomes enormous.
Thereby, according to the methods of presentation of information described above, it is difficult to present information for the user to be able to efficiently select an object information source the user really wants to access.